Brief Encounter

A movie about the movies and their influence, for both good and ill, on American foreign relations

Blue Streak, directed by Les Mayfield, reminded me a little of the extremely disturbing Austrian film, Funny Games, reviewed here last year, in that it leads us up the garden path of cinematic convention, then whirls around and cries: “Only kidding!” Nothing is what we thought it was. But where Michael Haneke, the sadist responsible…

The idea of a ghost who comes back from the dead to haunt his murderer is probably as old as murder itself and is familiar to us from the famous scene in Macbeth where Banquo’s ghost appears at the feast. But the idea of a ghost who appears not as a decorous classical shade, a…

A thoughtful and very watchable film whose performance does not quite match its ambition

[See discussion under “My Diary” of June 25, 2014] Discover more from James Bowman Subscribe to get the latest posts to your email. Type your email… Subscribe

Poets who die young are themselves a highly poetical subject, as Chatterton, Byron, Shelley and Keats could attest — but perhaps they’re less interesting in the movies